I shouldn’t have read this right before taking part in a panel discussion.
It’s a depressing and powerful take on what it was like to see a mass of Christians stuffing their faces with Chick-fil-A to oppose gay rights… written by a gay man who has had to deal with enough shit in his life:
When they say, “Gay people picked this fight”, they say that it is alright for Dan Cathy to espousing bigotry and pay to have gay people’s rights abridged but that my right to free speech is somehow different and it infringes on freedom of their religion. When they say, “I’m not going to let a good Christian man be harmed by the gay community” they are saying that they happily embrace the hatred that Dan Cathy promotes and hold me accountable for his financial well being (in other words, they expect me to pay for my own death). And when they say, “I’m not getting into this fight, I don’t care that you are gay, but I’m still going to eat Chik fil A” they are saying that my life is worth less than a chicken sandwich.
When a 60 year old man hears talk like that, he knows what to do with it. Yes, it hurts and it hurts deeply, but I’ve weathered those kinds of attitudes for years and things are better for me now then they were when I was in Junior High. However, for people like Raymond, for that lonely gay teen sitting in a Fundamentalist church with a bunch of girls, for the quiet kid in the back of the school room too afraid to say he likes boys, for the high school girl who cannot tell her parents that she is in love with another girl, for all of those kids like Tyler Clementi, the message is clear: “Kill yourself or we will do it for you or make your life hell. You are not welcome in our churches, unless you change and change radically or unless you lie about yourself. You cannot marry. You cannot tell anyone about your sexual orientation. If we get a sense that you are gay, we will fire your ass from your job. If we really know about you, we will see that you do not live in our buildings. If we are bored and have nothing to do but go around and beat up queers and carve scars onto their bodies or perhaps stomp them into a pulp or even kill you. And we have millions, MILLIONS, of people who will stand up for us and you have only a pitiful few who will stand up for you. And by the way, you are going to hell.”
This is why we must speak out against religion. Christians love to say their faith makes them better people. But there are too many victims of their “love” who can share stories proving otherwise.
(Thanks to Rick for the link)
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